Jade's right eye burned white before the room finished flooding.
Water ran across the broken tile in thin black sheets, carrying bandage wrappers, pencil shavings, and blood from the cot row. The shelter gym had stopped pretending to be a gym hours ago. Tables made walls. Bleachers made beds. Children hid where storage bins had been dragged into a half circle.
Waddell stood near the shower doors with an empty rifle and a knife in his other hand.
Kieran held a gold bandage around one arm and kept three children behind her with her body.
Tyree knelt beside the cracked command map, one hand on the bone charm at his throat.
Jade saw all of them at once, and that was the problem.
The white fire behind her eye turned people into lines. Waddell became iron gray pressure. Kieran burned gold at the shoulder. Tyree held a red coal shape against his chest. Every wounded person glowed around the injury. Every dead body under a sheet answered too easily when her sight passed over it.
